Music Rest for Alesis Digital Pianos and Casio CDP S Models

I bought a cheap used Alesis Recital and it didn't come with a music rest. Alesis digital pianos (at least the Recital, and probably others) have two round mounting holes spaced 52.5cm apart, and the music rests on Amazon don't fit that standard. (There may be other brands with the same standard, e.g., maybe the Thomann DP-26 and SP-5600.)

The main part of the rest is lasercut 6.1mm plywood. In the back there are 5mm diameter steel rods for the mounting holes, attached with 3D printed clips. One could replace the clips with a U-shaped staple, or with big blobs of JB Weld, if one has a laser cutter (or CNC router) but no 3D printer.

The files for laser cutting and 3D printing are here.

I also included alternate files for a number of Casio pianos with 19.5 inch spacing of the mounting holes. A website says that this spacing occurs on the models CDP S100, S110, S150, S160, S350, S360 and S90, but I have not tested any of this.

1. laser cutter that can handle a 273x230 mm piece
2. 3D printer (can probably be replaced by staples or blobs of JB Weld)
3. 6mm plywood (mine was 6.1mm)
4. 5mm or so diameter steel rod (two pieces about 15-20cm long each)
5. wood screws
6. vice (for bending steel rod)

Find steel rod that fits the mounting holes on the piano. (I used some giant nails that I scavenged when I removed a gutter years ago, with heads and points cut off.) For me, 5mm diameter worked well. You'll need two pieces that are about 15-20cm long each. Put each piece in a mounting hole and mark with a pencil how far in it sits.

Put rod in a vice, with the shorter end inside, a little bit past your pencil mark. Grab the other end by hand and bend it to the desired angle of the rest (if you didn't bend it at all, it'd be vertical). Repeat with the other rod, making the bend the same. I just eyeballed this, and it worked fine for me.

If you're lucky enough to have a piece of plywood that can accommodate the whole back (545x230 mm), cut it all as a single piece: back-full.svg.

I cut two half-size pieces, back-left.svg and back-right.svg, as well as two rectangles from joins.svg.

I was able to cut the shelf diagonally on the plywood I had available as one full size piece: shelf.svg. If you can't do that, cut both shelf-left.svg and shelf-right.svg separately.

Glue the shelf into the back. If you used half-size pieces, glue reinforcement strips from joins.svg to the back (one for the middle strip and one for the top; if you used shelf halves, you should probably cut a reinforcement strip for that as well). Wait for glue to set.

3D print clips for the steel rod. You may need to resize or sand the holes slightly if your steel rod is wider than mind. You need two end-clips and two, or to be on the safe side, four thru-clips. Use them with wood screws to attach the mounting rods to the back of the rest. Make sure your wood screws aren't so long that they poke out of the wood, or so short thatthey don't grab the wood well enough. About 12mm long shaft should work.